More Final Fantasy essays, metas, and examinations can be found here.

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We were promised an apocalypse…by very unreliable sources.  Allegedly, the world was supposed to have ended by meteor the last week in September.  Needless to say, I was disappointed that all we received was a lousy blood moon

that most of us couldn’t even view due to the goddamn clouds.

The only thing to be salvaged from this most disappointing apocalypse was that I, your Shameful Narcissist, believed it was the most opportune time to post this (potentially crackpot) Final Fantasy theory I’ve been ruminating on for some months.  As the title purports, it is very eerie.  So much so that I would not be able to work on this examination when the sun descends and the (blood) moon rises.  It deals in eldritch abominations, the fall of horrors, and reunions that dredge up ancient dark.

Faugh…that term “reunion.”  Fuck.  For the past week every time I’ve seen that word, I get exceptionally pissed off.  I’ll try to explain why in my indirect way of doing so without delving too deep.  I just finished rebuilding my wall, and I don’t want this to tear it down again.  Simply put, one of my Facebook friends used it as their way of coping with a death, and it makes me angry that there are people who can believe that shit, but I can’t.  I can’t.  Combined with the fact that “reunion” and “mother” are two concepts at the crux of FFVII and you can probably deduce the core of my issue.  If you can’t, read this.  Or don’t, it doesn’t really matter for the point of this essay (essay?  Is that was this is?  Huh…); it’s just a preamble for my state of mind.

*******SPOILER ALERT FOR FFIV AND FFVII*******

This essay is going to spoil both FFVII and FFIV so beware and be wary if you are not familiar with the climax of either of those stories as they will be ruined for you here (especially IV), since I have to explain integral parts of each tale in order to present my connection theory.  Spoilers will not be marked.

First I shall start with the FFVII logo, because for nearly 18 years, I lived a lie.

At first glance it looks like the meteor, the portent from the sky, the 6th Seal, the doom of the world, which would make perfect sense as the meteor or Meteor is a most pertinent plot point.  It stands as reasonable that Squeenix would use an image of it for the logo of the seventh story, but one day, a few months ago, some outside force prompted me to take a closer look, and I realized something: the meteor is there, but that’s not the main picture.  The main picture is the Planet itself.  The meteor is much smaller, chasing the sphere through the heavens.  Scroll back up and take a look, and you’ll see a smaller body a bit above the streak.  That’s the meteor.  The larger picture is the Planet hurtling through space.  I couldn’t speak for several minutes after I’d found this, because for nearly two decades I’d been seeing the symbol for my favorite story in the wrong way.  The main picture wasn’t the meteor heading for the Planet, but the Planet itself “running” from impending doom.

Now I’ve been known to be wrong before (shocking I know), and I could very well be about this new revelation, but I noticed that in all iterations of the logo, there was always the larger body being chased by the smaller.

And the remake’s logo has it as well.

If that little blip was random or an uncorrected error, why include it after 18 years?  And if the main picture is the meteor, what then is the smaller?  Examining the larger body the markings on it do like the minimalism we’d see for the continents of Earth (or Gaia in this case).  Whether the creators intended to have it be this way, I believe I do have a case.

Once I was brought to this revelation, the wheels started turning.  In the narrative of Final Fantasy VII Jenova crashed into the Planet on a meteor 2000 years ago from the current events (in media res anyone?).  It hit the northern part of the world, which still bears the wound, drove the Cetra (Ifalna and Aeris’s people) insane, gave them what they called “the virus,” mimicked their loved ones to get to them, until they were able to seal it away.  Unfortunately, the Cetra were decimated by this eldritch abomination and the knowledge of it (esoteric knowledge hm…) was lost with the demise of the Ancient race.  In VII it is never explicitly said where Jenova comes from, how old it really is, or how long it’s continued the cycle of devouring worlds.  We don’t know.  It is one of the story’s numerous secrets, one of VII’s many silences, but then, I thought of Final Fantasy IV.

The main world in FFIV is known as the Blue Planet and it has two moons, red and blue (this is referenced in FFIX and also used as an integral plot point there, as well).  According to the Great Wiki one of the moons is artificial, created by the Lunarians who are far more advanced than mere Blue Planet humans.  Cecil Harvey, the main character, and Golbez, who is actually his brother Theodore, are half Lunarian, which is why they have that silvery-white hair being part alien and whatnot *coughs*

Cecil is also one of the few direct subversions I’ve see of the White Hair, Black Heart trope, though later on we find out Golbez/Theodore is not as black-hearted as he first seems either.  He was controlling Kain, but was himself being controlled by Zemus/Zeromus, the true enemy that was able to get to both Kain and Golbez through the envy in their hearts.  I’ve talked about this before in my Sephiroth defense essay in terms of the precedent of meta-manipulation.  Cecil forsook the darkness and embraced the qualities of a paladin and so was spared the pain his brother and best friend endured.

At the end of FFIV after Zemus/Zeromus is defeated, Golbez/Theodore doesn’t feel as though he can remain on the Blue Planet and he must make penance for what he’s done (as Kain sequesters himself in the mountains for his own), and he leaves on the red (artificial) moon.  This is where the narratives of FFIV and FFVII could potentially (dare I say) collide.

What if the Lunarians evolved into what Jenova was after however long the time between the two stories was?  I prescribe to the idea that all Final Fantasies take place along the same time line.  You can see it in how the technologies of each story evolve going from more Baroque, Victorian, and steampunk in the earlier installments (IV along with VI) and becoming more modern to futuristic and cyberpunk in VII and surpassing the technology of our time in VIII with X showing the downfall of such a society (Note: FFIX was meant to be a short homage to all of the prior FFs and as such doesn’t flow along the same timeline. It was not meant to and should not be included in this measure).

If the Lunarians became what Jenova was, which would also make sense in that it is a hive mind entity that can invade your thoughts, find what you love and fear and use that against you, it is not so far-fetched to believe an entire race may have either transformed or been consumed by such a being also owing to what it did to the Cetra, turning them into monsters, mutations, ,and whatnot.  There were some pretty awful creatures in the Northern Crater.  It’s possible they, too, came from that meteor similar to the Lunar Cry in FFVIII.  Jenova, like the Lunarians, has silvery-white hair.  It’s not an improbable theory that it was the next stage of their evolution, horrible as that may be.

The other possibility is the Lunarians created this abomination themselves.  They did have advanced technology, enough to fashion an artificial moon and become a satellite of the Blue Planet.  It may have been an experiment with eugenics, which would make an even stronger tie in with FFVII.  Then this parasitic abomination may have killed them all, drained the life energy from the moon/world, and then used it to come back to the Blue Planet as “heaven’s dark harbinger,” “the calamity from the sky…”  Jenova arrived on a meteor that crashed into the north of the Planet, what if that “meteor” was what was left of the Lunarian’s moon?

When the moon has turned to blood…  The moon that left was a red moon and what returned would’ve left a red furrow in the sky as the meteor so summoned did (never mind the odd coincidence between this and ASOIAF, that’s for other essays)..  That, too, could’ve been another piece of what left being called towards the whole, which is an aspect of the Reunion Theory…  There is a scene in FFVII in Cosmo Canyon where Bugenhagen is showing the group what happens when the life energy of a planet is sucked away whether by an eldritch abomination or an evil company that could be considered the same.  It shatters into pieces.  Jenova could’ve arrived on merely a piece of that moon, and the meteor could’ve just been another part.

Now who is to say whether the creators meant for these two narratives to be tied together?  Who is to confirm whether or not this theory is the true way it should be?  Who can verify if the silver-hair and otherworldly beauty of Cecil and Theodore is supposed to resonate with the angelic glory of Sephiroth? But…if there is a connection, if there was a seed planted that was meant to sprout from this, if what was lost in IV was found again in VII it would be a very dark reunion indeed.

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